This presentation will explore significant recent updates pertaining to open access, open data, and persistent identifiers, and some of the ways we are responding at Oklahoma State University Libraries.

We will begin with an overview of the “Nelson Memo,” issued in 2022 by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to initiate planning for immediate public access to peer reviewed publications and data resulting from federal funding. We will discuss what the memo says, how agencies are responding, and what we might anticipate in 2025 given there will be a new presidential administration regardless of the election results. We will then move to an outline of the Federal Purpose License (also called the Government Use License) as a legal foundation for federal agencies’ right to deposit and reuse research outputs derived from agency funding. We will provide an update on efforts to formalize recommendations regarding persistent identifiers into a National Standard, summarizing the recommendations in the “Developing a US Persistent Identifier National Strategy” document. By the time of the conference a National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Working Group will likely have formed to author a formal text for public comment. The discussion will conclude with observations on the effect these efforts might have on research offices and academic libraries, including implications for compliance, labor & staffing, and models for supporting researchers.

We will then transition into a review of opportunities and challenges presented by these federal agency public access policies with respect to research data, including providing guidance for data management and sharing plan contents and supporting compliance with open access requirements. We will consider the importance of incorporating research data – and its impacts – in researcher evaluations like reappointment, promotion, and tenure and also outline our own efforts to quantify the impact of shared research data at an institutional level along with larger community efforts like the Make Data Count initiative.

This presentation will conclude with an analysis of the continuing shift toward transformative agreements and tension with diamond OA models. We'll examine how these developments are reshaping the scholarly communication landscape and discuss their implications for academic libraries. Additionally, we'll highlight the connection between the OSU Experts Directory and the Open Research Oklahoma repository, showcasing how this integration enhances research discoverability and participation in Green OA.